Jenny Allen Writes

Jenny Allen is a writer and performer. Her profiles, essays and reviews have appeared for years in many magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Vogue, Esquire, More, Huffington Post and Good Housekeeping. Recent essays appear in “Disquiet, Please!” a new anthology of humor pieces from the New Yorker, and in In The Fullness of Time: 32 Women on Life After 50, to be published this April by Simon & Schuster. She is the author of a book of fables for grown-ups called The Long Chalkboard, illustrated by her husband, Jules Feiffer. She helped originate the ’80s comedy group Serious Bizness and has performed in productions of Jules’ Blues and in readings of Spalding Grey: Stories Left to Tell. She produces and performs stand-up comedy evenings in Manhattan. I Got Sick Then I Got Better was first performed on Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of 2007; since then James Lapine has been collaborating with Allen and with Darren Katz on shaping and expanding the material, under the aegis of New York Theatre Workshop, which produced the show in 2009. Ms. Allen is now performing it in theaters around the country. She has two children, Halley, an actress, and Julie, a ninth grader, as well as a stepdaughter, Kate.